Under Obamacare, the Hen House Guards Morph Into Foxes

It looks like the new state-based exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act are powering the next spin of the Revolving Door. We are not even a full year into implementation and already the head of Colorado’s insurance exchange is moving on to more lucrative pastures on the other side. From The Denver Post:

The state health insurance exchange’s chief executive, Patty Fontneau, announced Thursday she will leave Connect for Health Colorado to take a job as president of Private Exchange Business for Cigna.

She will leave her post in mid-August. The exchange’s board of directors said they plan to name an interim CEO within a week.

In theory it might be possible to build effective states insurance exchanges using only private insurers which would aggressively control costs and strongly protect consumers; but in practice, I’ve long had serious doubts. The potential for them to be subverted and corrupted is just too high, especially in our country with for-profit insurance companies that can offer obscene salaries and have a history of bad behavior.

The people tasked with watching the hen houses under Obamacare are at the same time becoming the foxes. Amazingly, Democrats still seemed shocked that the law hasn’t become more popular.

Jon Walker

Jonathan Walker grew up in New Jersey. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 2006. He is now living in the Washington DC area. He created a politics and policy blog, The Walker Report (http://jwalkerreport.blogspot.com/).